Next Pokémon game to star “Sexual Deviant Pikachu”?

Just look at that face. That’s the kind of face you wouldn’t want to see grinning at you from the other end of a dark alley.

And yes, in case you’re in doubt, that’s Pikachu putting on his best “sexual deviant planning something untoward” face. What on earth could have spawned this unholy creation?

It turns out this is a facial capture of Pikachu talking in a planned Pokémon game with the (roughly translated) title of Detective Pikachu. On release, the game will apparently mark the first time in Pokémon history that Pikachu says something other than the name of his own species over and over again – something we had always assumed was just a verbal tick Pikachu picked up after taking too many ground-type blows to the head.

But if this is the face he makes when he prepares to say anything more complicated than “Pikachu!” we’re sort of glad he never spoke up to this point. In addition to the world’s first full-sentence-uttering Pikachu, the new game will also include a blue Pikachu variant and something called a “Sack Pikachu.”

Supposedly, the game will have players interacting with Pikachu the detective to solve Poké-world mysteries, probably all of them of a sexual nature and secretly perpetrated by Pikachu himself.

▼Here are two more awkward screen captures from an interview with the development team.